


the first language and the last

by shuofthewind



Series: Of Blood and Dust [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 + 1, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Angie Martinelli/Jack Thompson (but only if you squint), Awkward Romance, BAMF Peggy Carter, Daniel Sousa Is A Failboat, F/M, Feminism, French Resistance Peggy Carter, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Spies & Secret Agents, ~1000 Words Per Chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:05:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3819853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's starting to have a sixth sense when it comes to Agent Sousa, and she wishes that Bader would keep his nose well bloody out of it. </p><p>[Five times Peggy Carter noticed something about Daniel Sousa, and one time her daemon did.] </p><p>[HDM fusion fic.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. touch

**Author's Note:**

> A spiritual sequel of sorts to my drabble _of frost and fire_.

Peggy has never been tactile. 

She’s not certain if it was her upbringing (upper-middle-class, prep school prefect, perfect nails and perfect hair and a look that brooks no insolence) or her nature (sharp heels, wiry muscles, lipstick one shade shy of arterial) but she just doesn’t…touch people. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy it—touching, being touched—but beyond a handshake for an acquaintance, a touch on the back for a friend, or a light hug for a long-lost relation, she doesn’t really think about it. It’s less a rule and more a tendency, and one she doesn’t often go against.

She wonders sometimes why she’d be like this, when her daemon is so clearly a pack animal, when Bader’s ears and tail go up at the sight of people they know and love, when Bader’s favorite spot is at her feet with another daemon tucked into the curve of his belly. During those long nights in Europe, she can remember Bader curling together with Steve’s Linde, with James’s Scarlett, with Dum-Dum’s Asphodel and Morita’s Haru and Gabe’s Trissa, all of them puddled together under the table as they talked about troop movements and infiltration techniques and concentration camps.

That’s always how it’s been with her and Bader. She holds herself apart, because it’s her instinct, and he throws himself in, because it’s his nature. Or the other way around, she’s not certain.

It’s why that when she catches Daniel Sousa by the arm on the way into the lift, it’s truly just an accident. It’s an accident that his crutch catches on the unfamiliar lip around the edge of the lift (it’s his first day here and she isn’t quite sure what to make of him) and it’s more a reaction than an actual decision that has her seizing him by the elbow to keep him from breaking his nose against the linoleum (he doesn’t watch her the way the others do, as if they’re waiting for her to go off like a bad grenade) but before she can think it’s done. He’s heavy, and she nearly staggers out of her shoes before she heaves him up again. Bader’s leapt to his feet, pressing into her side to keep her from falling. Sousa steadies himself, and puts a hand up to his throat where the long dark-scaled serpent is curled, comma-like, against the shoulders of his suit.

“Thanks,” he says after a moment, his eyes narrowed a little. Peggy sets a hand on Bader’s scruff, and then nods once, brisk.

“Nonsense,” she says. “It could happen to anyone.”

The snake at his throat lifts her head (at least, Peggy assumes it’s a her, though she’s encountered men with male daemons before, and never found them wanting) and studies her with flickering dark eyes. Something in the line of Agent Sousa’s shoulders loosens a little. Finally, he scrubs one hand against his trousers, and offers it to her.

“Daniel Sousa,” he says. She takes his hand and shakes it twice, firmly.

“Peggy Carter.”

The corner of his mouth quirks. “I know. You were with the Howling Commandoes.”

Something about how he says it strikes her as odd. Usually if people know anything about her, it’s about her connection with Steve. She narrows her eyes, tightens her grip on his hand, and then lets it go. “Yes,” she says, slowly. “I was.”

The lift slots into place on the ground floor. Peggy pulls the grate back without thinking about it—she’s closer to the lock, it’s easier—and lets Bader pass first before stepping out onto the ground floor of the Bell Company. She waits for Sousa to leave, and then slides the grate shut behind him. He’s still watching her, as if he can’t quite make her out.

“What is it?” she asks.

“I thought the Chief introduced everyone upstairs,” he says. “Barely said anything about you. I’d’ve thought that he’d give the woman who helped liberate Paris a little more credit.”

She blinks. Then she blinks again. Bader’s ears flick towards Sousa, who meets Bader’s look steadily for a moment. Then he catches her eye again. Slowly, the corner of her mouth lifts. “Apparently, the most creditable thing about me lately is my ability to brew coffee and direct phone calls.”

“Oh.” He mulls this over for a moment. “His loss, then.”

She likes Daniel Sousa, she decides. Later, when she and Bader are closeted back up in the apartment, Colleen’s perfume lingering behind her like a haze, Bader curls up with his head on her stomach and his paws draped over her hips, and says, “I don’t feel so much like biting the new one.”

“That’s good,” says Peggy. “I think you biting anyone at the office might get us tossed out.”

“It would be worth it, I think.”

She laughs, and curls around him. Bader’s never bothered her. “That it might be, but let’s keep teeth to a minimum until we know how to best use them, hm?”

He scoffs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemons (so far):  
> Peggy--Bader [grey wolf]  
> Daniel--Martine [king cobra]  
> Steve--Linde [German Shepherd]  
> Bucky--Scarlett [mountain lion]  
> Dum-Dum--Asphodel [hedgehog]  
> Morita--Haru [blue jay]  
> Gabe--Trissa [snapping turtle]


	2. smell

It’s about three in the morning and she’s certain that they’re the only ones left in the office when she smells something scorching.

Peggy looks down at Bader. He’s dozing, flat on his side with his head puddled on Peggy’s shoe. The scar from a bullet in Paris looks decades old. She’d never known, before the War, that daemons _could_ scar. It seems obvious, now—she sets the balls of her left foot on Bader’s shoulder, nudges at him—but then she’d been silly, a girl who’d never broken her nails in the dirt, a girl who’d never swiped blood off her face and kept firing, a girl who’d never stumbled into a room full of bright golden Dust. Daemons can be hurt just like humans can, beaten and broken and killed. She doesn’t ever want to forget that. Bader’s scar helps her remember.

“I think,” she says, when he opens one bleary eye and gives her the wolf version of a scowl, a drawn-back lip and a flash of teeth, “that we have company.”

Bader draws in a breath, and lets it out. Her foot rises and falls on his ribs. “Paranoid,” he tells her, but then he heaves himself to his feet, his plumed tail waving back and forth.

“You never complained about it before.”

The scorched smell gets stronger. There’s a hint of coffee underneath it. Peggy frowns, and collects her empty mug (a good projectile more than anything) before slipping off her high heels. They make too much noise when she wants to be silent.

The staff room is only a bit of a thing, but considering Peggy’s spent nights brewing coffee over a stubby fire in the French countryside, or in Czech slums, or in snowbanks in Germany, it’s a palace. There’s even a sofa, for when people need a bit of a kip. The smell of smoking coffee beans rests heavy in the back of her throat when Peggy peers through the crack in the door. It’s Daniel. She hadn’t even known he was here, Peggy thinks, and she wonders whether he’s grown better at subterfuge, or if she’s become overly comfortable in this godforsaken place.

Peggy nudges the door open with her hip. On Daniel’s shoulder, Martine lifts her head, her tongue flickering through the air. She’s still not sure what she thinks of Daniel Sousa’s daemon—he strikes her as more of a wildcat than a cobra—but she nods at her anyway, because it’s polite, and because Martine defies expectation. “Daniel,” she says, once she’s sure Martine has warned him. She doesn’t want the offices burnt as well as the coffee beans. “Having trouble, there?”

He glances back over his shoulder at her. He hasn’t been home either, she realizes; he’s still in the same suit he’s worn all day, his blue vest rumpled. “Didn’t know you were still here,” he says. “Sorry. Spilled some beans on the stove.”

“I’d wondered.” She picks at the edge of one of her nails. She’d broken three of them, crafting her hiding place for the so-called Blitzkrieg Button. Her fingers still ache. “Are you making coffee?”

“I think a better phrase would be ‘attempting to,’ at this point.” He sets the kettle on the back burner. “What’s keeping the midnight oil lit? Not the docks again, is it?”

“I could say the same for you, after the past few days.”

He grimaces. "Thompson's shining moment."

She's not sure what to say about that. That Daniel is a better investigator than Thompson? It's true, but most of the SSR doesn't want to acknowledge it. That he's a better man? She's not sure of that. She doesn't know any of them well enough for that. He doesn't avoid her; he doesn't act as though she's fragile. Daniel is like her, in some ways; he's the one that people point to, and say,  _Look at the token crip_. Martine gets him worse glances, crueler whispers. Krzeminski (damn the man, damn that she mourns him, the cruel stupid brute) used to say that there was no point in trusting anyone with a snake for a daemon. The men might not treat him like they do her— _coffee, Marge; grab the phone, will ya?; sort these for me? You're so much better at that sort of thing_ —but they do treat him badly. She says, "Thompson's an ass."

Daniel coughs. The corners of his mouth lift. "Tell it like it is, why don't you."

"I do attempt to, yes." She takes the bag of coffee beans from him, setting them aside. She's still astounded, sometimes, by how the SSR can evade the rationing that keeps the rest of the nation pinching and saving and crying over butter. They have real coffee, real tea. Milk is always in the coldbox. "Have you never made coffee before, Agent Sousa?"

"'course I have. I'm not completely helpless." He adjusts his crutch against the counter, absent-mindedly. "I think I might just call it a night. The smoke'll give me a headache if I stay here any longer."

She hums. Bader nudges at her hand. Peggy glances down at him for a moment, and then back at Daniel and Martine. Martine's still watching them. Daniel turns off the range, batting at the air in front of his face, as if that'll do anything for the smell. "Are you all right, Daniel?" She tugs at Bader's ears, frowning. "You seem distracted."

Daniel gives her an odd look, then, considering, as if he's seeing something, some mask laid over her face that he doesn't quite recognize. Something skips in her gut, as if she's mounting stairs and a step has vanished from under her heel. Then the expression's gone, as if it's never existed. 

"I'm fine," he says. He takes up his crutch again. "I think there's a twenty-four-hour place a few blocks away that has decent coffee." 

"Well, then," she replies. "Let me sort through my papers."

His smile seems stiff, propped-up. It only makes sense later, when they're sitting on either side of an interrogation table, when she thinks _ah, he never knew me anyway._  But now, she just thinks it's a headache and exhaustion, frustration and nightmares. "'course."

Still. The oddness of the smile lingers. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during the space between "The Iron Ceiling" and "A Sin To Err." Daniel knows it's Peggy who was at La Martinique, but hasn't said anything yet. 
> 
> Krzeminski--Katrine [Jack Russell terrier]  
> Jack Thompson--Willa [peregrine falcon]


	3. hearing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-finale. Not really spoilery (there are some references, but not spoilery in regards to Plot) but still. Just to let you know.

She aches.

Peggy limps, her wrist (sprained, not fractured; she’d wondered, after) bound with thick bandages and Bader close against her side. She aches all through herself, as if her bones have been shaken in their sockets, but the ache inside is worse. _Such a fool_ , she tells herself. She ought to have known an attack could come from any side. She’s _good_ at picking out spies. So how was it that Dottie Underwood had been able to slip so neatly beneath her radar, given them all bright, gleaming smiles as if she was a bright, gleaming woman, and then killed so many?

 _Only a few_. Her logic is brutal and uncompromising. _Nothing compared to the war._

But this isn’t war. This is peace. People ought not to die like that in peace. She’s seen the photos of what the woman called Dottie Underwood had accomplished, the dentist in his chair. The failure stings, tastes like rust beneath her tongue.

Bader clings close to her. He’s limping too, though there’s nothing really wrong with him. He mimics her steps the way he always does, walking in rhythm. He’d snarled when the agents had come for them, whined high in the back of his throat when Daniel had pulled the gun. She’s sure that that’s half the reason why Daniel lowered the gun; that soft, hurt pining sound, the first that she can ever remember Bader making around Daniel Sousa. It digs under her nails like a splinter, or a fragment of bone.

“Marge.” It’s Agent Thompson. She pauses on her way into the SSR, resting her hand on Bader’s head. On Jack’s shoulder, Willa cocks her head, one bright, beady eye fixed on Peggy’s face. “Thought you were off today.”

“I thought the same of you.” She doesn’t know how to act around Agent Jack Thompson anymore. The story of the Japanese soldiers—that’s not unique, that sort of tale, but it makes him dreadfully human to her now in a way that he hadn’t been before, the way a cut reminds people they can bleed. He blinks, and then touches a bruise on his cheek.

“This? Nah.” He studies her for a moment, and then cocks his head the way Willa does. “Still pretty sure you’re off today, Carter.”

“If you can be here, I can be here.” She sets steel in her spine, straightens until her hips hurt from where Dottie Underwood threw her to the floor. “I’m not a child, Agent Thompson.”

He opens his mouth, a spark in his eye like he’s going to argue, but then his nostrils flare. He’s watching something over her shoulder. Peggy glances around. Agent Sousa is waiting behind them, papers tucked under his arm; his eyebrows lift. “Peggy,” he says. “Thompson.”

“Acting Chief Thompson,” says Thompson, and there goes his little glints of humanity. Peggy smiles, and turns her face to hide it. Such posturing from these boys.

“Acting Chief Thompson,” repeats Daniel, dutiful. He turns. “Actually I have a favor to ask. I found some Russian in an old file that I wanted to look into, but I’m more of a French man. Can you help?”

“Of course.” Peggy eyes Thompson for a moment, and then focuses again. “Considering Leviathan, I suppose it would be wise for us all to brush up on it.”

Thompson has nothing to say to this. With one last look, Thompson turns and disappears into Chief Dooley’s old office. It hurts to see his name on the door. Peggy eyes Daniel out of the corner of her eye, struggling to keep her smile from spreading.

“Were you eavesdropping?” she says. “That’s quite rude.”

“He looked like he was being an ass.” Daniel waits for her to pass through the door, and then follows after. “Or he looked like he was being like Thompson, which is to say, being an ass.”

“I really don’t need rescuing, Daniel.”

“Pretty sure this is me enabling you when you’re supposed to be home on sick leave.” He doesn’t smile, but his eyes are laughing at her. She’s suddenly, fiercely glad that there’s no awkwardness between them, that he’s not bitter about her telling him no. Other men would be, she thinks. And suddenly, fiercely, he reminds her of Steve, and that hurts too. Peggy watches him through her eyelashes as he looks down at her desk, and then hooks the end of his crutch around the leg of the nearest empty chair (Garcia isn’t in today, and won’t mind them borrowing it) to tug it over. No point in either of them standing, she thinks, while she has a shoddy ankle and his leg is the way it is. Something swells under her sternum, balloon-like, tingling. For the first time she wonders if it might not be a bad thing, letting Daniel Sousa fancy her. She wonders if she would have enjoyed it, if she’d said yes. “But _that,_ ” says Daniel, utterly oblivious,“is the last thing I’m going to say about it.”

 “Good.” None of this losing-track-of-the-conversation nonsense for her. She’d not have survived so long in France if she lost the thread of a simple chat. She settles in her chair, as carefully as she can. Martine glides down the length of Daniel’s arm and settles on the edge of the desk, tucking her nail neatly under her head as her eyes flicker over the pages. Next to Peggy, Bader rests his head in her lap. “Now. What’s this Russian you’re talking about?”


	4. sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this we cross into complete AU post-season stuff. I'd love to hear your theories on where the show might go if it's renewed. :D (PLEASE LET IT BE RENEWED PLEASE)
> 
> TW for blood, bullets, and shoddy field medical practices.

The haze of bullets died down an hour ago, and now in their little dugout there’s nothing but silence. Peggy leans back against the wall, her hair resting heavy against the back of her neck— _curls? Try mats_ —and shifting her knees so Bader has somewhere to rest. The rifle feels hot and uncomfortable in her hands. She’s always done better with much larger or much smaller firearms—pistols, revolvers, machine guns. Rifles require a bit more effort on her part, though how, she couldn’t say. It might have something to do with the balance.

She’s forgotten, since the War, what the French countryside can smell like. Bright summer wheat and mossy trenches and blood. They’re only a handful of kilometers from Verdun. She’d appreciate the irony if her shoulder would stop hurting.

Agent Kim is asleep. She rests with her hands beneath her cheek, the way a child would doze, but there’s a fresh-stitched gash on her forehead and a bruise on her broken nose that leave shadows on her face. Her daemon, a chameleon (Peggy hadn’t caught its name) rests unnaturally far from her, gazing out at the moon. Severed, she thinks, split. The way Bucky and Scarlett had been. It’ll make Thompson uncomfortable, when they get her back to headquarters; there’s no way to unnerve Jack Thompson better than to present him with a lithe, muscled woman with an exceptional daemon. Except perhaps if one presents him with a crying Martinelli.

She’s wondering, in the back of her mind, which one would be more satisfying to watch—Thompson learning that Angie had, in American parlance, played him like a drum, or Thompson shifting like a primary school boy when he realizes that Agent Kim’s daemon can wander as he likes, and nobody would ever notice—when she hears Daniel stir against the floor. 

“You’re still awake.” His voice is husky. Peggy doesn’t jump, stroking her hand down Bader’s back. The daemon’s eyes are gleaming yellow in the dark, in the sliver of moonlight that pierces the wood-blocked windows. They can’t even afford to have a lantern lit in here, don’t dare leave a single hint to their position.

She thinks of the dark-haired woman in the compound, Dottie Underwood by another name, her hair clipped and dyed and strange.

“You’re not on watch for another hour.” She shifts the rifle against her shoulder. In spite of herself, she hisses. Dottie’s lucky shot pounds out of time with her heartbeat, a supernova under her collarbone through the flesh of her shoulder. Blood flushes hot against her skin. “You should rest while you can. We’ll have to sneak out while it’s still dark, try to get the drop on them if we can.”

She hears a rustle against the earth. Martine, slipping from his shoulders. Daniel (she curses herself, because none of them should be here, she should have managed it better, she should have been _better_ ) heaves himself up off the floor. There’s mud crusted on his cheek, something dark underneath his fingernails. “Can’t sleep,” he says. Martine raises her head, her tongue flickering in the air as if to taste. “New York made me soft. Y’know?”

She knows. Soft beds and softer rooms and papers over blood. “Yes,” says Peggy. “I know.”

“How’s your shoulder?”

Of course he would ask about that. She’s not sure if she’s pleased about it, or irritated. “I can still shoot,” Peggy says. “I’ve fought with worse.”

“Not what I was asking.”

She bites her tongue. She knows he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. She knows he’s not trying to undermine her, not trying to dig under her skin, make her feel weak, reassure himself that she’s helpless. _He’s worried about you_ , she thinks hard. _Don’t be a clot._ Peggy draws a breath, holds it, and frees it again, digging her nails into the fur behind Bader’s ears.

“Could be worse.” She rolls her shoulder and makes a shocked unhappy noise. Next to her, Daniel flinches. “It could become a problem if I don’t get it cleaned again. We’ll need to get to the safehouse, get Agent Kim treated.”

“And you,” Daniel says. He hesitates. Between them, Martine draws herself into a tight ball, her tail dusting the earth. “Want me to check it?”

Something rises up her throat. Not fear. It’s shimmery. Anticipation, maybe. She crushes it back down. “Yes,” Peggy says, and turns to scoop her hair off the back of her neck. From this angle she can see Martine nudge at Daniel’s fingers. They’re long and callused, better suited to pianos than guns. There’s a scar across one knuckle from an old fight, and another on the inside of his wrist as he touches his daemon’s triangle head. Something’s odd about them, she thinks. Something doesn’t quite fit. Then his hands vanish from her line of sight. Daniel helps her with her jacket, and hesitates again when they come to her top, but Peggy unbuttons the thing—no time for modesty—and lets it slide down around her elbows. His thumb and forefingers press against the skin around the hole, pushing down, and she lets out a long low hiss. On her lap, she feels Bader tense.

Then Martine—lovely, shadowy Martine, darkness and light in one—reaches out and touches her nose to Bader’s. Peggy freezes, and watches them. She can’t remember if Martine and Bader have ever come close like this before, if this has ever happened. She doesn’t think Daniel has noticed, but Peggy is transfixed. Martine rises on her tail and layers herself over Bader’s paws, her head tucking up against Bader’s throat, deadly fangs kept back. Daniel wrings out a handkerchief and dabs at the bullet hole. She clears her throat, and her voice cracks. “How’s it look?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then he presses a dry strip of cloth—she has no idea where he found it, but he did—to the hole, and resettles the shoddy bandage job she’d done on the way out of the prison compound. On the other side of the hovel, Agent Kim stirs. “No infection,” he says, his breath ghosting against the back of her neck. “Not yet.”

“Help me with my jacket.”

They get her settled again, her armor back on, but Martine doesn’t raise herself from Bader’s feet. She’s so close to touching Peggy’s leg that her skin is tingling, and she knows from the look on Daniel’s face that he’s finally seen it. There’s color high in his cheeks and he can’t quite meet her eyes.

 _That’s what it is,_ she realizes. _He has gentle hands._

Peggy lays the rifle over her knees, and then sets her palm on the floor, spreading her fingers. Her pinky just barely brushes his. Daniel darts a look at her, and then spreads his fingers too. It’s barely a touch, it's there, it's happened, and now everything’s different.

She watches the moon until it’s time for his shift, and then lets herself doze.


	5. taste

They’re late in the office again, and this time it’s Peggy’s fault.

The cleanup after the French operation to liberate Agent Kim from captivity means a lot more paperwork than she’d originally anticipated. “That’s what comes from blowing up a barn on your way out,” says Bader when she complains to him in the elevator. Unfortunately, Bader has a point; she might stand by the use of explosives, as they are especially useful when one is being chased by Russian agents, but they do mean a hell of a lot of post-op reports.

Peggy, as leader of the two-man op into France, is the one who has to sign off on it all. Theoretically, she could do it all herself, but Daniel (who had helped her build the bomb) refuses to let her do it alone. “We both blew up the barn,” he says. “So, both of us get the paperwork.”

She loves him a little for that.

Bader sits at her feet. Martine settles herself in a glistening coil on the desktop, her eyes following every scrape of the pen. Peggy would find it unnerving, if she’d not been used to it. Something about writing fascinates Martine; the flow of ink from pens, the way one grips the pencil, all of it. She always watches. Lately, Peggy’s noticed that Martine has been creeping ever closer to her, as if she doesn’t quite notice how near she’s come. Tonight, she’s scared she’ll brush against Martine’s tail every time she finishes a line on her paper. Whatever shyness Martine has had until now, something’s happened, and she doesn’t know what’s different. So she pretends nothing is. It’s easy enough, when Martine never crosses that final line. It’s easy to pretend nothing is different, even though everything is.

Tonight, though—tonight Martine watches for an hour or two, and then says in a soft voice, “I can’t read your writing. What does that say?”

Peggy jumps. She jumps so badly that she knocks over her coffee, and it spills all over her half of the paperwork. Daniel lurches to try and get to his feet, but falls back into his chair, his leg betraying him. The coffee’s hot, fresh, and Peggy doesn’t think at all when she seizes Martine and lifts her out of the way of the steaming puddle.

It should feel wrong. It should feel terrible. But it doesn’t. It feels like a punch to the gut, like a kiss in a speeding car. It feels like ice and fire have just trailed down her spine, and it has her drawing in a breath and squeezing her eyes shut, because it’s too much sensation and she can’t handle it. Martine wraps herself tight around Peggy’s arm, and the slide of scales against her skin is exquisite and agonizing.  Across the desk, Daniel goes absolutely still. When she opens her eyes again, she can see his pupils have blown wide. His lips part. She swallows.

“Peggy,” he says. He sounds rubbed raw, like sandpaper. Coffee drips to the floor. “Jesus, Peggy.”

She croaks. She can’t think of what to say. Martine squeezes tight around her wrist, and it hits her again, the boneless ache of it, the _heat_ of it. She is literally holding his soul in her arms and she can’t bear the thought of letting it go.

She’s not sure which of them moves first, Daniel heaving himself to his feet or herself, darting around the desk, but in an instant they’ve smashed together, Martine still wound around her arm, hood flared. Daniel’s hands are on her neck, his thumb stroking down the sternocleidomastoid, and her pulse thrums under the touch. Her shoulder aches. She nudges her nose up under his jaw and sets her mouth there, too close to a real kiss, too far to actually call it one. She can feel his heartbeat. His palms press warm against her skin.

Then she kisses him— _she_ kisses him, she kisses _him_ —and it’s beautiful and strange. He tastes like fresh brewed coffee and her lipstick smears on his mouth. No chaste thing here. She kisses him with lips parted, with her tongue flush against his, his daemon’s venomous head pressed close into the pulse beating in her throat, and he kisses her back. He kisses her like the kiss is hope, not a lament, and that breaks her and builds her again in an instant. He kisses her with his mouth hard against hers and lifts her up onto the desk, knocking the other mug down to shatter, and together they jump and break apart. There’s hot coffee stinging against the edge of her skirt.

“Oh,” she says, still so close that she can feel him panting against her mouth. His eyes are just a ring of color around black, and she can see a fleck of a scar on the edge of his nose. She wonders what he sees. On her shoulder, Martine hums.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Peggy chokes and laughs. She lifts one hand from Daniel’s chest and strokes his daemon’s head with her forefinger, and it has his spine stiffening and both him and Martine humming in pleasure. She wonders what it’ll feel like if he touches Bader. She wonders if he would blush if she asked him to.

“It seems serendipitous to me,” says Peggy, and Daniel laughs and kisses her again, cupping her face in his hands. Martine slips away from her, and she keeps on kissing him, because she wants to, because she can. Because she likes the taste of coffee and hope on his lips.

Steve is, was, and will always be her dirge. Daniel, she thinks, is her ode to the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever to write and edit back down to under 1k. I hope y'all are happy. 
> 
> Unbeta'ed, like every other chapter, haha. 
> 
> One more chapter~!


	6. bader

“So when were you going to tell me about your guy?” Angie asks one morning as Peggy stares into her teacup. It’s not often that they’re up at the same time; Angie has been working the night shift more frequently lately, and that means she sleeps in in the mornings, whereas Peggy has an eight-to-five on a regular day. (On an irregular day she might not return for a week, but Angie’s used to that.)

Peggy blinks slowly—she might be awake, but she’s certainly not conscious—and rolls the words around in her head for a minute or two before adding a sugar cube to her tea.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Grow up and pull on your big-girl pants, English.” Angie fluffs her hair, irritably. “I’ve known for ages that you have _some_ guy hanging on your every word. You wouldn’t keep wearing your red pumps otherwise.”

“I don’t need a reason to wear anything other than I like wearing it.”

Angie waves a hand at this. “Point taken. I don’t know how you manage to get them wrapped around your finger like you do—”

“You say that like I’m setting out to sweep a tidal wave of men off their feet, which I most certainly am _not—_ ”

“Oh, shush.” She sips at her coffee. On her shoulder, Peter nibbles daintily at a biscuit, his sunshine-colored crest bobbing. “You manage it anyway. I think it’s your accent. Lots of GIs’d do anything for a girl with a foreign accent, y’know?”

Peggy ignores this bit of frippery. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Please.” Angie gives Peter another biscuit. “You don’t say much about work but when you do, you talk about two fellas. One you complain about. The other you kinda talk around, but it sounds like it’s a significant talking-‘round, y’know? Instead of a ‘this is a national secret’ sort of thing.” Peggy stares—she’s not sure if she’s more worried that she’d been so easy to read, or that Angie seems to have developed an eye like a master interrogator. Angie doesn’t seem to notice. “’sides, Peter told me Bader thinks his daemon’s nice.”

“Traitor,” Peggy says, looking down at Bader. Bader is singularly unconcerned.

“Martine is lovely,” he tells her. “She’s told me lots of things. And—” he slides his gaze towards her, his eyes saying _I know something you don’t know_ “—she knows quite a few secrets.”

“Don’t you say a word,” Peggy says to Bader. Then she scowls at Angie and Peter, who are both snickering. “And you two stop laughing. It isn’t funny.”

“You joking? This is hilarious.”

“Right,” says Peggy, and stands. “Come on. I have to go to work.”

“Spoilsport,” says Angie, but she lets Peggy bestow a kiss on the cheek anyway. “I’ll find out one way or another, Peg. Don’t think I won’t.”

“Oh, the terror.”

They’re halfway to work and settled into their own comfortable silences when Bader shifts a little, and knocks his shoulder into Peggy’s calf. She looks down at him, lengthening her stride to step over a pothole. “What is it?”

Bader tilts his head, as if he’s debating something. Then he says, “He was never scared of me.”

“What?”

“The others don’t like me.” Bader says it as if it’s a fact, and it is. The other agents have never liked Bader. They don’t like looking at him, their eyes coasting over him as if he’s something that they don’t wish to notice. In their eyes, a pretty woman with painted nails ought to have a pretty, painted daemon, and Bader doesn’t fit that mold. “Daniel never ignored me. Not Martine either. They look at both of us when he’s talking to you. Even when they thought we’d turned on the SSR, they never…” He trails off. “Nobody’s done that since the Commandos.”

Since Steve, he means. Since Steve and Linde and the family they built around them, all passion and warmth and purpose. Something squeezes under her breastbone. Peggy stops on the corner and crouches down, smoothing her skirt against her legs. She takes Bader’s face in her hands. He searches her face, and then touches his cold wet nose to her cheek. “I like him, Peg,” he says, and her eyes burn. “We need to make sure not to lose this one, too.”

She nods. Peggy opens her arms, heedless of the crowd of New York around her, and Bader leans his head against her chest and lets her pet him, the way she hasn’t needed to since right after Steve died. It’s only when he licks her cheek that she realizes that a few tears have escaped, and pulls back to wipe her eyes. Peggy strokes his ears.

“We’re not going to,” she says. “Not if we can help it.”

Bader nods.

They’re late to work, and Thompson gives them merry hell for it, but it’s worth it. She slips her foot out of her shoe and sets it on Bader’s back beneath her shared desk, enjoying the tingles of warmth when Martine brushes her tail over the arch of her foot, the curl of fur beneath her sole. Daniel’s laughing at her with his eyes as they pass paperwork back and forth, and she knows it the way she knows Bader, the way she knows her soul. She’s late today, but it’s more than worth it.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand done! I've been considering turning this 'verse into something more like a oneshot series, with some little ficlets like this mixed in. What do y'all think?


End file.
